Leveraging automation to derive value from financial data

Sunil Thakur, Country Director, India, BMC.

The financial services industry is one of many that saw its world move predominately online with web- and app-based transactions during the pandemic. In fact, recent BMC research, Deliver the Digital Experiences Customers Demand found that 70 percent of consumers conducted their financial interactions online in 2020.

As part of that digital ascendance, financial organizations are now more inundated than ever with data—and what they do with it will be key to their success. According to the Spring 2021 EY Financial Services Center for Board Matters, which convened 35 directors from some of the largest global banking organizations, deriving value from data is one of their top tech transformation priorities right now. And Capgemini’s World Retail Banking Report 2020 found that 62 percent of banking executives plan to implement data at scale by 2022.

Achieving that target is going to require shifting away from outdated, manual processes and turning to emerging technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). And it’s part of a larger evolution to become an autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE), the future-state business framework achieved when companies act with agility, customer centricity, and actionable insights. Automation Everywhere and the Data-Driven Business are two ADE tech-enabled tenets, and as the names imply, automation and data are a big part of them.

Data, data everywhere

Automation Everywhere embraces the idea of technology as a complementary business function that works with humans, not in place of them, to enhance and improve their performance, efficiency, and innovation. As IT has become more consumer-oriented, and the pandemic reshaped how we work and live, the business-critical need to automate operational and end-user functions—such as those concerning customer data—with limited human intervention has skyrocketed.

Our 2020 BMC research with Forbes Insights, The FinServ Future, found that emerging technologies were on the drawing board for many financial organizations. Fifty-six percent planned to significantly increase the use of workload automation and 93 percent planned to invest more in AI and ML. One big reason for those investments is to better leverage data to create content and tailor experiences that are relevant to customer interests.

As a concept, the Data-Driven Business is applied to almost all companies today, especially the financial sector. Data is generated by every customer and partner touchpoint, and according to PwC’s Payments 2025 and beyond: Navigating the payments matrix, “payments generate roughly 90 percent of banks’ useful customer data—information about who is buying what, how much, and when…creating new revenue streams for payments businesses that can monetize [it].”When you factor in that the volume of cashless payments is expected to reach 1.9 trillion transactions by 2025, it just makes good business sense to maximize the value of that data as efficiently as possible.

PwC cites the growth of digital payments in India as one example of the move away from cash. The country’s volume of digital transactions increased at an average CAGR of 23 percent due to, “the launch of new and innovative payments [and] products, increasing smartphone adoption, a growing need for faster payment modes, and a strong push from government and regulators towards adoption of digital channels.”

Also Read: Automation & AI are future and Datamatics is synced to it: Rahul Kanodia, VC & CEO

Making sense of all that data

Recent research highlights the importance of employing new technologies to help manage data. In Capgemini’s Commercial Banking Top Trends 2021, analysts suggest that “Banks can tighten the competitive gap…by taking advantage of real-time data and cutting-edge technology, such as AI and ML, to [provide] data-driven personalized customer service for small and medium-sized enterprises [and help them] keep their customer relationships intact and not lose them to nimbler FinTechs.”

Those newer technologies can also help banks break silos, leverage huge amounts of data to generate value-added insights, and integrate with myriad client systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), treasury management systems (TMS), and accounting systems “to automate and streamline finance and treasury processes for smoother data interchange.”

BMC solutions

BMC can help with competitive differentiating solutions that also drive a better customer experience.

BMC Helix Control-M: As a single point of control that integrates and orchestrates workflow development, scheduling, execution, and monitoring, BMC Helix Control-M is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application workflow orchestration solution that automates the process of ingesting, storing, processing, and analyzing financial data across various applications—at scale.

BMC Helix: This full suite of service and operations management products leverage automation, AI, and ML to deliver pervasive intelligence that protects business-critical systems and improves analytics to help financial organizations yield valuable insights from data and get ahead of issues before they reach customers and impact the business.

Conclusion

There’s never been a better time for financial organizations to get their data in order, especially with the adoption of ISO 20022, the ISO standard intended to standardize electronic data interchange between financial institutions. Automation and emerging technologies can help financial organizations gather, analyze, and monetize data with the speed and accuracy demanded by today’s real-time, always-on, and increasingly global and digital financial environment.

Views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of Sunil Thakur, Country Director, India, BMC.

"Exciting news! Elets Banking & Finance Post is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest insights!" Click here!

Elets The Banking and Finance Post Magazine has carved out a niche for itself in the crowded market with exclusive & unique content. Get in-depth insights on trend-setting innovations & transformation in the BFSI sector. Best offers for Print + Digital issues! Subscribe here➔ www.eletsonline.com/subscription/

Get a chance to meet the Who's who of the Banking & Finance industry. Join Us for Upcoming Events and explore business opportunities. Like us on Facebook, connect with us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest.